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Breathe. It Helps.

10/30/2020

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Pause right here and take a deep, slow breath.
Now do it again.
One more time. Maybe add a hand to your heart and belly.

The intensity of this moment here in the US (and global) is very real...
you are not crazy. 

I've been hearing from folks a sense of overwhelm leading to exhaustion, 
of wired-but-tired feelings,
of anger,
of despair,
and sometimes, even glimmering hope.

All of these feelings and more are welcome right now.

After we've done our part and voted (please!), and contributed in whatever other ways we've felt called, there is a portal of waiting that we all must enter.

We do not know. 

Not knowing is quite traumatic for most of us.
Be gentle with the you who might be grasping for control.
Be tender toward the self that wants desperately to know.

In this space of waiting and not knowing,
there is a beautiful portal to pray.
Pray to what feels true to you:
Pray to Spirit, or pray to the spirit of democracy & human decency.
Pray to our collective Heart, that we might remember how to be with each other with compassion & consideration.
Pray for a remembrance and healing in those who cause harm.
Call in a vision of a way forward that is gently & beautifully transformative.


Either way things go, we have a long road of work and restoration ahead.
There is a gentle path available... and I am praying that we walk it.

Tuesday at 7pm PST we are holding our weekly Breathwork & Energy circle, and I invite you to put a reminder in your calendar, take a break from the reporting, and gift yourself an hour of breath and community.
This week all proceeds go to World Central Kitchen, which among other things is doing beautiful work feeding voters stuck in long lines.


I am opening up extra hours of availability in November to support you individually and in small groups.
Prioritize care.
Make nurturing your nervous system (and every other system)
a non-negotiable.
Create pro-active space for yourself in the months ahead.
We can move through this time with grace, but we have to be willing to receive and offer care.

We travel together now.

I hope to see you Tuesday.
I hope you find small ways to create beauty and connection in the spheres you move in.


Breathe. Imagine. It helps.

Big love,
Julia
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The Origins of the word Crisis

9/23/2020

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Energy Medicine traditions have a history of surfacing in times of turmoil to carry humanity through and guide us toward a new way. Reiki first surfaced just after World War I, and made it's way to the West during World War II. 

I am no longer pretending that we are not in perilous times.
There is great power in imagining how we would like things to be, but the foundation of that power comes from first acknowledging the truth of what is.

The noun crisis comes from the Latinized form of the Greek word krisis, meaning "turning point in a disease." At such a moment, the person with the disease could get better or worse: it's a critical moment.

We are in a multitude of crisis moments, and that means we are in a moment of great possibility, and great danger.

Studying Reiki & Energy Medicine at this time is an invitation to call forth the great possibility that live in us individually and collectively, so that we can meet this moment of danger and make our turn toward individual and collective healing.

I offer this work so that we can have a collective consciousness shift.

I'm passionate about teaching because I've seen and experienced what is available to us when we reconnect to our Soul and the Soul that lives in everything.

If you feel even remotely called toward this work, if you feel an ache toward a new way of being, if you feel at a loss for how to meet this moment we are in...

I am holding a space for you. 

There are tools available to help you take care of yourself, those you love, and to offer something to the world around you.

Dig in. Reach out.
Big love,
​Julia


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Learning to Be In Reciprocity

9/21/2020

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I've just begun a 10 month apprenticeship into Herbal Medicine and Plant Spirit healing. I'm already gripped and moved by coming into deeper understanding and relationship with the web of life and nature that has been waiting for us, that has been disrupted BY us, and that offers so much medicine for our individual and collective repair.

We've been many-generations raised in a culture of extraction.
And our survival (and thriving) relies on us coming to understand principles of reciprocity.


If the land is alive, if the plants and animals and stones and wind are all alive... where is our relationship with them?

When the fires rage, do we stop and connect to Fire?
To listen to what it might have to say?

What if crisis is a call into relationship?

What if our desires require us to offer something in return?

As I write this, I sit looking out over this magnificent view. I was highly doubtful that we would get here... this month has felt full of disruption and chaos. But as my trip grew closer, I had a thought:

"Perhaps I can pray to the land, ask permission for our visit, ask for the gentleness and replenishment that we are seeking. Ask if I can offer something in return."

So I prayed. And asked permission. And asked the Land how it felt about us coming up for a visit, for a rest and reset.

The simple gesture of coming into relationship with all elements has entirely shifted my experience of a simple weekend getaway.
Things have flowed with ease.
The wind rustles through the trees as if to say hello. 

Where can you come back into relationship
​with one natural element around you?


Where can you ask permission for what you've taken for granted, or offer something in return for all that has been offered to you?

In the same way we extract from the land, we extract from one another and even ourselves.

Where can you pour into yourself this week?
Where can you pour into the folks you come in contact with?


I'm excited for the joyful liberation that will come when we truly learn how to stop extracting and start relating.

Big love... hang on to that magic :)
Julia
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We learn how to breathe...

9/14/2020

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We learn how to breathe in new ways when the air is filled with smoke. We learn our body, learn where there is space that we've never inhabited with breath before. We learn how to slow down, calm down, stay as relaxed as possible so that we can breathe.

We learn how to breathe differently when we wake up to the injustice of those around us. We look more tenderly, we let our throat constrict with real emotion & compassion for experiences we cant even begin to imagine.

We learn how to breathe differently when our world is rattled by an illness that impacts our individual and collective health. We learn how to share space in new ways, to come into deeper communication with our body's needs. We learn how to look for opportunities to take care or ourselves and others.

We are learning new ways to breathe this year.

For my West Coast folks: I am with you, with so much compassion and connection for the grief of our forests and our skies right now. Do all that you can to take care of your sweet bodies, lungs, and minds. Don't hesitate to reach out if I can offer support or guidance.

For everyone: We dig deeper when the pressures intensify...
The upcoming Reiki 1 & 2 training is an excellent opportunity to dig deeper into a spiritual connection and to gather tools for navigating these transitional times. We need new practices to care for our bodies and minds, we need new understandings to make sense of things in a way that keeps us moving forward. Reach out with questions or see full info below.

BodyTalk & Energy Medicine sessions are available via Zoom or phone. Packages available as well for hybrid sessions.

This Wednesday 9/16 @ 7pm PST Michael and I are holding our weekly Breathwork & Energy offering, though this one will just be a gentle energy session to support our minds & nervous systems. Exchange is $10, with all proceeds going toward climate and racial justice. We've raised over $1500 in the past few months... thank you!


Do something nice for both your body and mind today.
Add some lemon to your water.
Take five minutes to breathe gently while listening to a beautiful song.
Reach out for support where you need it,
and offer it to others where you have it.

We are each other's keepers in this time.

Big love,
Julia
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The Stillness Beneath

8/30/2020

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Last week while traveling, my partner and I were evacuated from one of the fires raging in central California.

It was a wild and heartbreaking experience, but there was one moment that has stayed with me:

As the fire raged nearby, jumping canyons and coming closer, and ash rained from the sky, the land beneath me and the air around me was stiller and quieter than anything I had experienced before.

While we experienced chaos, the land beneath us was still.

My Mind has been raging lately; spinning thoughts and reflections, essays and posts written & rewritten before being discarded. How do words capture this time? How can this Mind even attempt to make sense of it all?

Underneath, though, my Body and Soul aches for me to come into the stillness below. 

Last week Fire showed me that we have so very little control right now... my human thoughts and words feel quite feeble when the Earth is speaking a language of 1 Million Acres consumed in a week's time. 

...yet, there is an invitation to surrender into the stillness below.

There is a space of quiet available
​in our Bodies, our Souls, our Land, our Collective. 


Going there is against everything we've been taught. Softening into that space may feel like the most dangerous thing we've ever done.

It's the one thing we haven't yet tried, though. Perhaps there is something to be found there. Maybe there is a different way.

I'm here to support if you'd like to practice softening into that quiet, still space. I'm here to connect if you are looking to navigate these times in a different way.

Big love, stay with it...
Julia
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I Started a Garden

5/10/2020

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Picture
I started a garden when everything went quiet. It seemed like the obvious thing to do. The house had always wanted a garden- I had always wanted a garden- and now I had the time and incentive: food sovereignty suddenly felt like necessity, beyond idealism.


I started a garden and I watched the beast of my mind begin to wind it's obsessive tendrils around the project. Comparing raised beds. Researching the best seeds. Stepping outside a couple... a few... a dozen times a day to study sun & shade & wind. 

I picked out my desired crops. Reasonable, practical choices; what do we eat? What might get harder to find? What do I trust myself to grow well, and what feels possible in this little urban outpost we have found?

The soil came. I ordered too much but thats fine. The beds were delayed. Delivery estimates seemed moot. My sleep began to strain under the whirring of my brain tracking optimal start dates. I couldn't wait any longer, the planting season was slipping by. I decided to start the seeds in empty egg cartons, feeling exquisite satisfaction at the opportunity to re-use.

Meticulously dropping tiny seeds into tiny holes, pausing to google insider tips on which plants like how many seeds per hole and what quality of soil will get me the best, mightiest shoots. I was going to do this right. I was going to do this RIGHT.

Egg cartons full of soil and seed, lined up on the porch railing. Watered daily. Nudged in and out of optimal sun spots through out the day. Waiting, waiting, resisting the urge to poke around. The beds still weren't in, Home Depot hotline was a blackhole of hold music. Maybe I'd gotten in over my head. Maybe this was a mistake.

Until one morning, stepping outside while I waited for the coffee to brew, I saw it- sprouts. Tiny green beings using all of their might to push sizable clumps of dirt out of the way so that they could stretch up and out. It was happening. It was WORKING. There was no turning back.

I planned, and prepared, and strategized, and mapped out every detail of this tiny garden-to-be. My partner watched, wide eyed;  "I've never seen you like this."

"I'm moving into my danger zone," I warned, "please don't leave me".

This mind, this beast that I've carried around my whole life that locks onto a target, a destination, a project and once it has decided, flips every switch to ON. 

So ON I stayed. Everything revolving around this. This garden is it. The garden is all.

Beds came, dirt in, new plants picked up and seedlings ready to go. 

And then one evening in the perfect light of a setting sun (moving my hands over the dirt and settling things in just right) I was struck by the image of my paternal Grandfather, having come back from WWII with the memory of walking through concentration camps fresh in his mind...

...and his desire to start a garden.

I was slowed, for once in this process, by the vision of a plot of land meticulously cultivated by a man fresh home from war.

What do you do in the wake of such loss and grief and destruction that there are no true winners?

What do you do when you don't know what comes next?

I have not fought in battle as he did, but I've often felt my mind is his; over-active, hyper-vigilant, tracking & exacting to an excruciating end. 

What do you do with a brain that is programmed to fight & survive? What do you do in a world gone mad?

It's a terrible mind and a wonderful mind, this brain I've inherited from Raymond. It can hold seemingly endless threads of possibility and pattern recognition, and it can also hold me hostage, binding & ensnaring me with those very same threads.

What do you do when the world's burnt down, and you've been sent home to try and create a new normal?

Raymond started a garden. Raymond made things grow. 

My partner didn't leave. "You're crazy and I love you and I'm proud of you. I'm here to help."

I can be crazy and I can be loved. And I can make things, and I don't have to do it alone.

I started a garden. I made a thing when nothing else seemed sure. 

My Grandfather and I are creating a garden. The rest of my ancestors are here as well. We are healing from our respective battles. We are tending and nurturing as a most rebellious act. We are composting the waste of our cultures and choosing to believe that there is still value and meaning in helping something grow.
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Name It.

5/4/2020

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I found a pocket of pure rage in my being this past weekend,
and was so grateful to find it and name it.

I'd been skating above it with mild irritants, general feelings of malaise, and even some artificial delight.

But when I was able to finally find this place of rage and name it as such, I felt a holy fire available to me
that I did not want to go to waste.


Every emotion has an energy we can use.
Every feeling has a possibility in it.

When we don't look,
Don't touch,
Don't name them...

That energy goes to waste (or worse, eats us alive).

I want to see our grief,
our joy,
our rage,
our despair


MOBILIZED.

I want to see what we can create from this potent moment where everything feels a bit too much.

Hand on heart. and hands in dirt. and hands wiping tears. and hands cast skyward in prayer...

I am here.

Thank you for meeting me in this moment.

Big love (and Magic),
Julia
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    Author

    Julia is a healer, gatherer, and artist of many mediums. She is passionate about restoring our First Sight. 

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  • Home
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